Author: ALU Editor
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On writing, race, and salmagundi: An interview with Jean Marc Ah-Sen
We electronically chatted with Jean Marc Ah-Sen—author of the highly praised novel The Grand Menteur—who is back with a literary mashup of varying prose styles in his new short story collection In the Beggarly Style of Imitation (Nightwood Editions). Filled with intriguing characters who do despicable things and vital takes on race and identity, In the Beggarly…
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Six Books for Pride
Librarian and Lambda Literary award winner (Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian), Metonymy Press) Hazel Jane Plante shares six choice titles by queer and trans writers for Pride Month.
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Beautiful Books: OO: Typewriter Poems
Dani Spinosa’s newest collection of visual poetry OO: Typewriter Poems (Invisible Publishing) challenges the male-dominated legacy of avant-garde visual poetics. A collision of analog and digital traditions, OO: Typewriter Poems pays homage to the history of visual poetry while critiquing the progressivist and masculinist ideals that continue to inform the genre. Below, Dani tells us about the process…
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In Review: The Week of May 25th
This week we got cooking with the right ingredients for five short story books to make your quarantine more digestible, talked about community, writing, and Ma Anand Sheela, discovered a near-future dystopian debut, and more.
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First Fiction Friday: Watershed
A near-future dystopian debut novel set in Alberta in 2058, Watershed (Freehand Books) by Calgary storyteller and musician Doreen Vanderstoop considers what happens after the glaciers are gone and water has become our most previous natural resource.
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Cooking with Off/Kilter: 5 Books for Short Story Month
If you’ve been finding it hard to read with all of this uncertainty in the world, we recommend catching the tail-end of Short Story Month with our tasty list of short story reads, all with a swirly bent on the strange and surreal. Here in the Off/Kilter Kitchen, we give you the ingredients for 5…
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Writer’s Block: Brad Casey
We electronically chatted with poet and writer Brad Casey, author of the recently published short story collection The Handsome Man (Book*hug Press), about the most surprising thing about being a writer, why now’s the time to brush up on political solidarity, Ma Anand Sheela from Wild Wild Country, and more.
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In Review: The Week of May 18th
THIS WEEK: literary follow-ups to give your Netflix queue a break, author chats and inside scoops, tips to finding a book without its title, and more.
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Watch This, Read That: Netflix Edition
If you relate hard to those “Netflix are you still watching memes?” here are three literary follow-ups to your favourite shows to offset all the binge-watching.
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Quoted: Remember, It’s OK: Loss of a Parent
Inspired by their own experiences with loss, and seeing how so many suffer alone with their grief, Remember, It’s OK (Blue Moon Publishers/Next Chapter Press), is a new series of books that open the doors of grief. The co-creators (author Marina L. Reed and psychotherapist Marian Grace Boyd) help you navigate the waters of grief bravely, with…
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Under the Cover: Seizing absurdity in Devolution
Author Kim Goldberg takes us behind the cover of her surrealist, satirical collection Devolution (Caitlin Press): a personal act of extinction rebellion written over ten years, Devolution evolved from the playful mindset Kim held to cope with a personal cancer battle and the daily destruction of our ecosystems. Below, she tells us more about what went into writing…
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Writer’s Block: Bridget Canning
Bridget Canning, author of The Greatest Hits of Wanda Jaynes and the more recently published Some People’s Children(Breakwater Books), chats with us about bike riding to discover new perspectives, getting out of the house on a perfect writing day, finding out what a character carries around in their pockets and more!
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In Review: The Week of May 11th
This week we shared poems to celebrate Jewish History Month, discovered a Kafkaesque debut novel, cheered on the finalists of the Trillium Book Awards and Indigenous Voices Awards, and much more!
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First Fiction Friday: The Transaction
Author Guglielmo D’Izzia debuts his Marina Nemat Award-winning novel The Transaction (Guernica Editions), a suspenseful train ride that makes an unscheduled stop in a southern Italian town where a string of unsettling events culminate in a psychological tailspin to the very end.
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Two Poems From Tablet Fragments
Tamar Rubin grew up immersed in Hebrew, Jewish traditions and texts, in a secular household, the daughter of an immigrant mother. In becoming a physician, she learned yet another language: medicine. All of this history comes together in Rubin’s first published collection, Tablet Fragments (Signature Editions). Weaving between the texts of all her learning, Rubin employs her…